Mark
Elliot Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook, was born in 1984,
which is the same year the Macintosh computer launched. He grew up
with the technology, mastered it and has created a social networking
empire with nearly 600 million users. He has been chosen as Person of
the Year 2010 by TIME
for "connecting half
a billion people and mapping the social relations among
them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and
for changinghow
we all live our lives."

TIME
further detailed why it chose Zuckerberg, saying that he is at the
very center of the social changes our world is experiencing. The
creation of Facebook has altered the way we communicate with one
another entirely and has expanded
our social circle. TIME
quoted Virginia Woolf, saying "On or about December 1910, human
character changed." It was noted that a century later,
transitions are taking place once again.

"We
are living through another transition," said the TIME
article. "The way we connect with one another and with the
institutions in our lives is evolving. There is an erosion of trust
in authority, a decentralizing of power and at the same time,
perhaps, a greater faith in one another. Our sense of identity is
more variable, while our sense
of privacy is expanding. What was once considered intimate
is now shared among millions with a keystroke."

According
to scientist Robin Dunbar, humans have the widest social circle of
any primate species with about 150 people in their circle. Our
ancestors may have only encountered 150 people in their lifetime, but
now, thanks to social networking, humans are capable of exceeding
that number and beyond.

Not
only does Facebook expand our social circles like never before, but
it also taps into two human characteristics that never change:
narcissism and voyeurism. This, according to TIME,
is mainly why this social phenomenon is prospering faster than any
other social
advancement.

"In
a single day, about a billion new pieces of content are posted on
Facebook," said the TIME article. "It is the
connective tissue for nearly a tenth of the planet. Facebook is now
the third largest country on Earth and surely has more information
about its citizens than any government does. Zuckerberg, a Harvard
dropout, is its T-shirt-wearing head of state."

Zuckerberg
was chosen amongst four other runners-up, including The Tea Party,
which is a political movement that began in the United States in 2009
to sponsor nationally and locally-coordinated protests against the
government; Hamid Karzai, the 12th and current President of
Afghanistan who became an important political figure after the
Taliban government was removed in 2001; Julian Assange,
editor-in-chief for WikiLeaks, which was a whistleblower site that
leaked government documents onto the Internet to shift regime
behavior, and the Chilean Miners, who were trapped at the San Jose
copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert by Copiapó,
Chile from August 5, 2010 until October 13, 2010.

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I think a much more poignant award would be Clown of the Year. Or perhaps Moron of the Year. In either case, the number of candidates each year would be staggering! Just look at some of the possible recipients: